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1-30 of 30
- Actress
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Soundtrack
Elsa Martinelli was born in the central Tuscan city of Grosseto into a struggling family, one of eight siblings. She had to earn her keep from the age of twelve, delivering groceries in Rome. Looking older than her years suggested, she then did some part-time work as a barmaid. Aged sixteen and ambitious, she moved on to modeling and was soon promoted by well known designers, and, in particular, by a New York magazine editor who suggested a move to the Big Apple. While employed with the Eileen Ford Agency, she was spotted on a Life magazine cover by none other than Kirk Douglas (or by Douglas' wife, according to another version of the story) who, incidentally, happened to own a fashion company. In any case, Elsa soon found herself in Hollywood to co-star opposite Douglas in The Indian Fighter (1955) (despite some as yet unresolved problems with her command of English). Her sojourn in tinseltown was short-lived, however, and the contract she had signed with Douglas was quietly annulled -- and thus she famously spurned an opportunity to appear in the lucrative blockbuster Spartacus (1960). There were to be no further American pictures at this time. Instead, she returned to Italy, married Count Franco Mancinelli Scotti di San Vito, joined the glitterati, attended lavish parties and created an image for herself which rivaled those of Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. She counted Aristotle Onassis and Maria Callas among her close friends.
Taken under the wing of Carlo Ponti, Elsa was able to eventually make a success of her screen career not merely because of her exotic good looks, but by deliberately varying the type of parts she took on and thereby avoid typecasting. Those included the titular Stowaway Girl (1957) who bewitches an embittered steamboat captain played by Trevor Howard. In stark contrast, she was also Carmilla, possessed by her vampiric ancestor Millarca in the unsatisfactorily filmed Blood and Roses (1960), an 'arthouse' horror movie, though artlessly directed by Roger Vadim, based on Sheridan Le Fanu's Gothic novella. Encumbered by excessive bathos, neither scary nor original, the only saving grace of the picture was derived from Claude Renoir's evocative camera work.
In Hatari! (1962) -- which might aptly be described as a good-looking travelogue -- Elsa co-starred as a freelance wildlife photographer on a Tanganyika game farm, torn between affections for baby elephants and 'bring-'em-back-alive' trapper John Wayne. With character development sorely lacking, the animals, the scenery (and two exquisitely ornamental ladies -- the other being Michèle Girardon) pretty much stole the show. Likewise, in her next outing, the wartime comedy The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962), Elsa was the romantic (mostly decorative) interest of Charlton Heston's army guy smuggled into Nazi-occupied Rome in 1944 to extract and send back secret military information via carrier pigeon. For the remainder of the '60s, Elsa appeared in a number of international co-productions which included a segment in The Oldest Profession (1967) as a Roman Emperor's wife discovered in a brothel; and as a gangster's daughter helping a bumbling American treasury agent in Rome (played by Dustin Hoffman in his first starring role) to recover Madigan's Millions (1968).
In 1968, Elsa married Paris Match photographer and furniture designer Willy Rizzo. Having already invested some of her earnings from film work into Roman and Parisian real estate, Elsa began to diversify into designing avant garde furniture with apparently mixed success. By the 1980s, she was active as an interior designer in Rome while still making sporadic screen appearances, primarily in TV series. Described by the newspaper La Repubblica as "an icon of style and elegance", Elsa Martinelli died on July 8, 2017 in Rome at the age of 82.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Luisi Pistilli's most notable stage successes were roles in "The Threepenny Opera", "St. Joan of the Stockyards" and a 1972 production, "Lulu". In 1991 he reprised his role in "Lulu" in the first professional collaboration with actress-singer Milva, his partner in previous plays as well as in a four-year offstage relationship. Pistilli's most memorable roles were in Francesco Rosi's Illustrious Corpses (1976), Lino Del Fra's Antonio Gramsci: i giorni del carcere (1977), Carlo Lizzani's Italo-Bulgarian co-production The Bandit (1969) and Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), in which he played priest Pablo Ramirez, the brother of Eli Wallach's character Tuco. He also worked frequently in TV, including the Mafia series La piovra (1984), directed by Luigi Perelli.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Born in Massa Marittima, Italy on August 6, 1931, Umberto Lenzi was a movie enthusiast since his early grade school years. During those years, he founded various film fan clubs while studying law. Lenzi started out as a journalist for various local newspapers and magazines. Lenzi put off his law studies to pursue the technical arts of filmmaking at the Centro Sperimentale de Cinematografia.
After graduation from the school, Lenzi continued working as a writer and film critic. He found employment as an assistant director before making his directorial debut with Queen of the Seas (1961). Other pirate/sword flicks followed, starting with I pirati della Malesia (1964) (Pirates of Malaysia), which was part of the height of the career of fictitious tales of historic legendary characters including Robin Hood, Catherine the Great, Zorro, Sandokan and Maciste. For the movie Kriminal (1966), Lenzi turned to the new wave of adult-oriented comic books (known as fumetti) for fresh inspiration and initiated a popular trend.
After directing a war film and two "spaghetti westerns," Lenzi turned to the giallo gene with Paranoia (1969) (originally called "Orgasmo"), starring Carroll Baker and Lou Castel, which was the first of his thrillers and one of his personal favorites. Retitled Paranoia for its USA release, Orgasmo caused some confusion since Lenzi directed a movie with the same name, Paranoia, in 1970 also with Carroll Baker. During the 1970s, Lenzi directed a number of giallo thrillers among them So Sweet... So Perverse (1969), Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972) and Eyeball (1975). None of them were particularly successful since Lenzi blamed his tight budgets and poor scripts, which he believed no director could do well with.
In the late 1970s, Lenzi turned to the police thrillers (polizieschi), which rejuvenated his confidence and his popularity. Titles like Almost Human (1974), Tough Cop (1976) (Free Hand For a Tough Cop), and Brothers Till We Die (1977) (Brothers Till We Die) were the most popular and brutal of the thrillers. Prior to the polizieschi, Lenzi directed Sacrifice! (1972) (Man from Deep River), which was the start of the Italian cannibal sub-genre. A re-telling of the western A Man Called Horse (1970), with a south Asia setting, set the stage for a later group of extremely gory cannibal sub-genre movies most noteworthy being Ruggero Deodato's Last Cannibal World (1977) which featured a potent combination of extreme violence in a documentary realism. Lenzi responded with two very gory jungle cannibal features, Eaten Alive! (1980) and Cannibal Ferox (1981) (Make Them Die Slowly), which attempted to outdo Deodato's thrillers. The excess of Cannibal Ferox, which was banned in 31 countries, made Lenzi distance himself from the cannibal genre.
In between Eaten Alive and Cannibal Ferox, Lenzi directed Nightmare City (1980), a zombie flick, with Lenzi rejected the slow-moving zombies of the Romero and Fulci movies for a more type of fast-moving, weapons toting, super zombies with action and an anti-nuclear message.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Lenzi turned his attention to other genres: action-adventure, war films and even made-for-TV dramas, although he directed the occasional thriller most notable in that time was Ghosthouse (1988). His movie Le porte dell'inferno (1989) is a seldom-seen horror film, which makes the most of its low budget. Lenzi claimed to have shot it in three weeks at a cost of 300 million lire, whereas low-budget Italian horror films shot in Italy or abroad cost an average of a billion lire or more. It represented a personal challenge for Lenzi since the entire movie takes place in a cave and the suspense is maintained for the entire 90 minutes.
As his budgets and financing for his films dwindled, so did his output. The 1990s saw Lenzi directing a number of TV productions that were never broadcast, causing him lament upon the change in Italian film industry. After 40 years and directing over 60 films, Lenzi more or less retired from film directing and left his mark as one of the most creative and inexhaustible cult film directors of Italy.
Umberto Lenzi died on October 19, 2017 at a hospital in the Ostia district of Rome, Italy at age 86.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Editorial Department
Luciano Tovoli was born on 30 October 1936 in Massa Marittima, Grosseto, Italy. He is a cinematographer, known for The Passenger (1975), The General of the Dead Army (1983) and Tenebrae (1982).- Gioia Desideri was born on 18 March 1940 in Grosseto, Italy. She is an actress, known for Isabella, Duchess of the Devils (1969), The Pizza Triangle (1970) and Asylum Erotica (1971).
- Stefan Le Rosa was born on 28 September 1985 in Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy. He is an actor, known for Sleepover Club (2003) and Neighbours (1985).
- Art Department
- Director
- Writer
Alessandro Capitani was born in Orbetello (Gr) in 1980. In 2004 he graduated at the Faculty of Arts in Bologna. In 2006 he was admitted at the Centro Sperimentale of Cinematografia as a pupil of being directed where he graduated in 2009 with the shorts films "The Chance" and "Dream Man".- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Born in 1987 in Grosseto, Tuscany, he now lives and works in Rome, mainly within a creative trio named ZERO. He has been working as a director for many advertising campaigns, music videos and web videos. In 2014, he published his first novel "Forse cercavi" by the Italian publisher Mondadori. In 2016, his short novel "Checkpoint" appeared in "Reflusso crossmediale", a collection published by L'Erudita. In 2022, he made his feature film debut with the comedy-drama "Margins".- Writer
- Director
Giuseppe Bennati was born on 4 January 1921 in Pitigliano, Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (1974), Operazione notte (1957) and Red Lips (1960). He died on 27 September 2006 in Milan, Italy.- Carlo Palmucci was born on 8 February 1942 in Grosseto, Italy. He is an actor, known for Romeo and Juliet (1968), The Leopard (1963) and Burn! (1969).
- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Egisto Macchi was born on 4 August 1928 in Grosseto, Italy. He was a composer, known for Ocean's Twelve (2004), Miss Lovely (2012) and Avenger of the Seven Seas (1962). He died on 4 August 1992 in Montpellier, France.- Writer
- Actress
Teresa Ciabatti was born on 5 May 1975 in Orbetello, Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy. She is a writer and actress, known for Three Steps Over Heaven (2004), The Woman of My Life (2010) and Un gioco da ragazze (2008).- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Marco Giusti was born on 24 December 1953 in Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy. He is a writer and director, known for Roma, santa e dannata (2023), Stracult (2001) and Scirocco (1998).- Writer
- Director
- Producer
David Bellini is an Italian writer and director. Graduated in Political Science, Bellini learned screen-writing by the Oscar-nominated writers Vincenzo Cerami and Furio Scarpelli. He's signed more than 500 TV episodes in Italy. He was among the writers of two of the most popular TV Comedies ("Un medico in famiglia" and "I Cesaroni") and one of the edgiest political talk shows ("Tetris"). Some of his works won the most prestigious television awards in his country. Bellini is the official spokesman of the Writers Guild Italia in Los Angeles since July 2013. Served as the SACT representative in L.A. from May 2012 to July 2013.- Composer
- Soundtrack
Otmar Nussio was born on 23 October 1902 in Grosseto, Italy. He was a composer, known for Whispering Pages (1994) and The Lonely Voice of Man (1987). He died on 22 July 1990 in Italy.- Maria Chiara Belardinelli was born in 1995 in Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy. She is an actress, known for La freccia del tempo (2019).
- Franco Colomba was born on 6 February 1955 in Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy. He is an actor, known for Nobili bugie (2017) and Quelli che... il calcio (1993).
- Cesare Giorgetti was born on 14 November 1926 in Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy. He died on 23 August 2014 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy.
- Mariarita Viaggi was born on 12 November 1954 in Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy. She was an actress, known for Delitto in Via Teulada (1980). She died on 3 July 2024 in Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy.
- Roberta Lombardi was born on 15 August 1973 in Orbetello, Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy.
- Alessandra Sensini was born on 26 January 1970 in Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy.
- Luciano Bianciardi was born in Grosseto (Italy) on December 22nd, 1922. In 1940 he enrolled at the University of Pisa, but from 1943 to 1945 his studies were interrupted by active service in World War II, after which he finally obtained a degree in Philosophy.
After going back to his home town and getting married, he began working as library director, teacher, journalist and writer. In 1954 he moved to Milan and took on a job for the Feltrinelli Publishing House, and also started writing novels. His first novel, "Il Lavoro Culturale", was published in 1957. In the same year he lost his job at Feltrinelli and starts working as an English-Italian translator.
Thanks to his work, all the major books in Anglo American contemporary literature were published in Italy for the first time (Henry Miller, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow are some of the authors whose works he translated). In 1962 Bianciardi published his most important and popular book, "La Vita Agra", which obtained immediate success and great critical acclaim, and was turned into a film by Carlo Lizzani, starring Ugo Tognazzi.
He kept writing books as well as articles and editorials for several newspapers and magazines until his death in 1971. - Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Editor
Alfredo Baccetti was born on 8 May 1989 in Grosseto, Italy. He was a director and editor, known for The Switch Bitch Video (2011) and Ride Forever: The Switch Bitch Crew Video (2023). He died on 22 June 2021 in Barcelona, Spain.- Renato Fucini was born on 8 April 1843 in Monterotondo Marittimo, Grosseto, Grand Duchy of Tuscany [now Tuscany, Italy]. Renato was a writer, known for Times Gone By (1952). Renato died on 25 February 1921 in Empoli, Florence, Tuscany, Italy.
- Animation Department
Aurelio Galleppini was born on 28 August 1917 in Casal di Pari, Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy. Aurelio is known for Tex & Company (1980) and Supergulp, i fumetti in TV (1977). Aurelio died on 10 March 1994 in Chiavari, Genova, Liguria, Italy.